It takes a village to raise a child. Adoptive and foster parents rely on experts and professionals to help them heal, grow and flourish. Mental healthcare professionals, including all school personnel providing mental healthcare, have a vital role to play. We all see the headlines and realize there is a mental health crisis in our nation. More and more money is being poured into schools for mental health care.
But sometimes good intentions can have unintended outcomes. School personnel without adoption competency training can roll back years of hard attachment work. It’s recommended that therapeutic treatment of foster and adoptive kids are best left to outside treatment professionals working alongside the caregiver to provide adequate and appropriate support. But it is still important for school personnel to understand the confusing behaviors and emotions that they can see in these children who have had brain processes rewired from attachment trauma and other experiences
We need to rethink adoption policy for the 21st Century
We are working to make mental healthcare safer in schools by our educational resource guide and training and in working with policy makers and leaders in education and social work. Providing safeguards in school mental healthcare to protect adoptive and foster children is a non-partisan and urgent issue.
If these school personnel providing mental healthcare were in private practice, they would have monitoring and supervision by state agencies and joint commissions. Why not in our schools?
We see this as a Call to Action!
The dynamic of the environment of school personnel providing mental healthcare, whose opinion and expertise is placed above all and has immunity as a mandated reporter, while meeting in confidential sessions with vulnerable and fragile kids, means we should have safeguards in place for accurate assessments and supports.
